List of Resource Material for the Arts in Multicultural Australia
A great starting point for more research in this area. List prepared by Dr Helen Andreoni, of the School of Aboriginal and Multicultural Studies, University of New England.
Looks at the art practice of Fiona Foley (Thoorgine Country), Terry Ganadilla (Mewenbi Country) and Dale Yowingbala (Gamerdi Country), three aboriginal artists who worked together on an unusual project in Maningrida during 1991.
A great deal of agonising has gone on since the 1988 Bicentenary about the nature of Australian identity and therefore the nature of our distinctive culture.
This is a new notion for me. I'm sure it is a term familiar to most readers. However, just in case, this is my version of what it means. To understand it you need to appreciate that there is an hierarchical order of metals determined by their 'nobility'. A sacrifical anode is less a noble metal which is used to attract impurities away from more noble metals that you do not wish to be eroded. Thus if you wish to avoid erosion in your copper boiler, you can put a sacrificial anode in the water which will attract the impurities in the water and keep them away from your noble boiler. The link between multicultural artworkers and sacrificial anodes is entirely my own!
Tang Qizhong is a painter and Fine Arts educator from China. He writes about his art practice and the relationship between art practices and institutions in China and Australia.
A very personal view. And finally there is a need for us to allow art and artists to develop from their own roots, regardless of their country or culture of origin.
Exhibition review: Works by Nola Routoulas, Helen Karpathakis, Nora Mantzioris and Alexandra Akritidis.
Artzone Gallery, Adelaide South Australia April 1991
Fortunately the artists are capable of overturning all the newly acceptable conceits about them, and they might deny most of the assumptions that multicultural academics make about them, whilst still giving a new window on our world, as indeed, all good art from anywhere will.
It is the responsibility of Australian Collections to preserve this material - correspondence and manuscripts as well as printed texts - in many languages, not as exotic flowers of 'accented' literature, but as integral parts of the history and literature of multicultural Australia.
Since the birth of Australian television, non-anglo Australians have suffered from an acute case of foreign accent syndrome. Unfortunately 35 years on they are still suffering, not only from bad accents usually spoken by Anglo actors playing NESBs, but from the dearth of authentic storylines and subsequently the lack of accurate representation of NESBs on our TV and screens.